Happiness of Being: The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

A collection of articles discussing the philosophy and practice of the spiritual teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, written by Michael James and forming an extension of his main website, www.happinessofbeing.com.

Sunday, 7 October 2018

Last month a friend wrote me an email in which he asked me to clarify certain aspects of Bhagavan’s teachings, including what he means by ‘within’ when he says that we must look within, and whether the source of the individual self can be within that same individual self, so this article is adapted from the reply I wrote to him.

Saturday, 1 September 2018

In the comments on my previous three articles there was an ongoing discussion about the role of free will and the law of karma in general, and various friends have expressed differing views about this matter, so this article was originally intended to be a reply to some of those views but it has developed into a broad and detailed discussion about the key role of our will and the paramount need for us to rectify or purify it.

Monday, 30 April 2018

For a few days last week I was in a place where I did not have any internet connection except on my phone, but on and off during that time I had a conversation via WhatsApp with a friend called Frank about Bhagavan’s teachings, philosophy, ego and other related matters. The first fifteen sections of this article are compiled from edited extracts of our conversation, and the final section is a reply that I subsequently wrote to him by email (as also are the five paragraphs in earlier sections that I have enclosed in square brackets).

Saturday, 10 March 2018

After telling me that he is now reading Ramana Maharshi: The Crown Jewel of Advaita by John Grimes, a friend sent me two WhatsApp messages saying:

I am ‘excited’. For the first time I read about or understood the distinction between the illusory nature of the world and that of the individual — John Grimes’ book p. 147 and 148. Seeing the rope as snake and seeing the white conch shell as yellow conch shell due to the unseen or unrecognized yellow glass. Wonderful explanation that struck me.

Brahman manifesting as world, but seeing only the world as real is illusion like seeing the rope as snake. The individual though only brahman, and also felt as I, but due to ego (yellow glass), mistaking I as me or mine.

Thus while both are illusions, the second one is that in aspect or nature of ‘I’, although I is seen or experienced. When the ignorance is removed, it will be known that it is brahman that was being all the while experienced hitherto also as ‘I’ — that is there are not two ‘I’s.

The mind knows that the chair is a chair, an object of wood, etc., but this is not what the chair actually is. If we analyse a little deeper, both the chair and the wood are ideas in our mind, and we have no way of proving to ourself that any chair or wood actually exists independent of our ideas of them. Hence Bhagavan says that the whole world is nothing but ideas or thoughts, as for example in the fourth and fourteenth paragraphs of Nan Yar?:

Except thoughts [or ideas], there is separately no such thing as ‘world’.

What is called the world is only thought.

Referring to this, another friend using the pseudonym ‘ādhāra’ wrote a comment saying:

However, Bhagavan did not say that we as an ego are excluded from the “world”. On the contrary it is said that we are part of the world in waking and dreaming. So we can conclude that we too are only an idea or a thought or a projection.

We definitely do not even have proof/evidence that we exist independent of our idea of that. Therefore we cannot reasonable/well-founded have to presume that we are more than an idea. There is no evidence to support this thesis.

Nevertheless we can put our trust in Bhagavan Ramana because he inspires confidence and looks trustworthy. To follow Bhagavan’s teaching is even urgently necessary.

Monday, 1 January 2018

As I explained in my previous article, Upadēśa Kaliveṇbā: the extended version of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, over the coming months (or perhaps years, if other work gets in my way) I hope to be able to publish a series of forty-two articles each of which will be a detailed explanation of one of the verses of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu along with its kaliveṇbā extension or extensions, so this article is the first in this series.

No commentary on the verses of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu can be considered complete or entirely comprehensive, because however much one may explain and discuss them there will always be room for further explanations and discussions from different perspectives, so the explanations I will be giving in this series of articles will be far from complete. However my aim is to give at least a basic explanation of each verse, enough to make its profound and rich meaning clear and to enable each reader to do their own reflection (manana) on it.

Thursday, 28 December 2017

Sri Muruganar had collected twenty-one verses that Bhagavan had composed on various occasions, and in July 1928 he asked Bhagavan to compose some more verses in order to form a work of forty verses (like four ancient Tamil poems each of which consisted of forty verses, namely Iṉṉā Nāṟpadu, Iṉiyavai Nāṟpadu, Kār Nāṟpadu and Kaḷavaṙi Nāṟpadu) elucidating the nature of reality and the means to attain it. Accordingly on the 21st July 1928 Bhagavan began to compose more verses on this subject, and in order to arrange them into a logical order and to form them into coherent text, he and Muruganar would discuss in detail the progress of the work, where gaps needed to be filled, and which of the original twenty-one verses should be retained and which discarded.

Friday, 20 October 2017

As I explained at the beginning of my previous article, Upadēśa Undiyār: Tamil text, transliteration and translation, Nāṉ Yār?, Upadēśa Undiyār and Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu are the three texts in which Bhagavan expressed the fundamental principles of his teachings in the most clear, coherent, comprehensive and systematic manner, which is why these are the three texts that I cite most frequently on this blog, and therefore friends often ask me for my complete translation of each of them. My translation of Nāṉ Yār? has been available on my website for many years, and for a long time I have been meaning to post my complete translations of Upadēśa Undiyār and Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu there also, but somehow I did not get round to doing so till recently, when I finally decided that I should put it off no longer. Therefore having posted my translation of Upadēśa Undiyār in my previous article, in this one I give a fresh translation of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, which is a carefully revised and refined version of all my earlier translations of it.

Friday, 29 September 2017

The three main sources that I cite in articles on this blog are Nāṉ Yār?, Upadēśa Undiyār and Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, because these are the three texts in which Bhagavan expressed the fundamental principles of his teachings in the most comprehensive, systematic, clear and coherent manner, but though there is a complete translation of Nāṉ Yār? on my website, I have not till now given a complete translation of all the verses of either Upadēśa Undiyār or Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu in one place, so since friends often write to me asking for such a translation of these texts, I have decided to give a complete translation of each of them here. Therefore in this article I give a translation of all the verses of Upadēśa Undiyār (which Bhagavan composed first in Tamil and later translated into Sanskrit, Telugu and Malayalam under the title Upadēśa Sāram, ‘The Essence of Spiritual Teachings’), and in a subsequent article I will likewise give a translation of all the verses of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu.

Sunday, 24 September 2017

A friend recently wrote to me asking several questions about practising self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) in the midst of family and work life, the role of physical solitude, attachment and detachment, feelings of utter desperation and disillusionment, and about how to live in the world when one feels no connection with or concern for anything other than the practice taught by Bhagavan. The following is what I replied to her:

Monday, 11 September 2017

A friend recently wrote to me, ‘I am a Ramana devotee. Bhagavaan asked to watch the “I” and find the source of this. I am watching the “I” whenever my mind is not needed for my work. I am so happy with watching the “I” all the times. [...] How to find the source of this? Should I try to keep my mind in right side of the heart?’, and the following is what I replied to him:

Thursday, 7 September 2017

A friend recently wrote three emails to me asking various questions about the practice of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), so in this article I will reproduce his questions and the two replies I wrote to him.

The discussion began with two comments in which Sanjay Lohia paraphrased something I had said about jñāna, karma, prārabdha and free will in the video 2017-07-08 Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK: discussion with Michael James on the power of silence, to which Salazar wrote a reply in which he said: ‘Prarabdha goes on in every second of our lives, every scratch, every little thing is prarabhda, and no outward action is determined by the ego. If we are vegetarian or eat meat, that’s prarabhda too. So if anybody of Bhagavan’s devotees still eats meat, don’t beat yourself up, that’s as much destiny as if a Hindu eats beef what may create inner turmoil unless one does atma-vichara. So we seem to be a puppet, at least what happens to the body, however we are not victims of prarabhda because we can transcend prarabdha with atma-vichara. The actions of the body will go on as destined, but the inward identification loses its hold’. This triggered a series of other comments in which various friends expressed their understanding of Bhagavan’s teachings in this regard, and during the early stages of this discussion Sanjay wrote an email to me asking me to clarify whether the type of food we eat is decided by our destiny, so this article is written in response to this.

Thursday, 24 August 2017

You prefer using ‘ourself’ or ‘oneself’ or ‘I’ instead of ‘the Self’. It is because by using ‘the Self’ we tend to objectify ourself. So this point is clear. But then why do we use ‘the ego’? Are we likewise not objectifying ourself by using ‘the ego’?

Before I came to India I had read of such people as Edward Carpenter, Tennyson and many more who had had flashes of what they called “Cosmic Consciousness.” I asked Bhagavan about this. Was it possible that once having gained Self-realization to lose it again? Certainly it was. To support this view Bhagavan took up a copy of Kaivalya Navanita and told the interpreter to read a page of it to me. In the early stages of Sadhana this was quite possible and even probable. So long as the least desire or tie was left, a person would be pulled back again into the phenomenal world, he explained. After all it is only our Vasanas that prevent us from always being in our natural state, and Vasanas were not got rid of all of a sudden or by a flash of Cosmic Consciousness. One may have worked them out in a previous existence leaving a little to be done in the present life, but in any case they must first be destroyed.

Referring to this, a friend wrote to me: ‘Having once attained is there a chance of unattaining again? This question has confused me for many weeks. I was under the impression that once the ego had been completed annihilated it will never rise again. Yet discussions with fellow devotees on the Ramana Maharshi Foundation page seem to indicate that even once attained it is possible to be lost again if all vasanas [are] not destroyed. What was Bhagavan’s view on this? It disturbs me immensely that having attained one can fall again into the illusion, it also seems to render our practise quite meaningless if that is the case’. The following is my reply to her.

Thursday, 13 July 2017

A friend recently wrote to me asking, ‘What is the difference between nothingness and complete self-awareness? I understand the destruction of the mind is the ultimate goal of the practice, but does that mean we aim to just be nothing at all?’, but then added, ‘Obviously this question arises from an ego that is afraid to not be, but I am curious’. The following is adapted from my reply to him:

Friday, 7 July 2017

In a comment on one of my recent articles, There is absolutely no difference between sleep and pure self-awareness (ātma-jñāna), a friend called Roger asked me why, if there is no difference between sleep and self-awareness, Gaudapada says in Māṇḍukya Kārikā 3.44 that (in Roger’s words) ‘when during meditation the mind becomes inactive in oblivion (susupti / sleep) the mind should be awakened again, just the same as if the mind is distracted’. From this verse and Sankara’s commentary on it Roger inferred that ‘It seems you teach that sleep is the highest state, your whole teaching is oriented toward this, but Shankara explicitly warns against it’. Therefore this article is written in reply to this and a subsequent comment by Roger.

Thursday, 6 July 2017

You say that the Self is always self-aware. What about then the concept of Parabrahman (where awareness isn’t aware that it is aware). Isn’t this a contradiction? Ramesh Balsekar used this phrase a lot in his teaching for instance.

Tuesday, 27 June 2017

Someone wrote this on FB yesterday and I am getting confused again because I thought the idea of becoming realised is to put an end to Maya:

“According to Adi Shankara (7th century father of modern non-dual philosophy), Maya is eternal. At no point does “form” cease to exist. It (maya/form) never had a beginning because it is eternal. It will also never have an end. The difference between enlightened and unenlightened is in the mind only. The universe doesn’t disappear. The mind ceases to be confused about the nature of one’s own Self. Bodies may come and go but the enlightened mind is not attached to them or identified with them. Yet they come and go like clouds in the sky.”

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

What I wrote in one of my recent articles, Do we need to do anything at all?, triggered a discussion about the roles of destiny (prārabdha) and the ego’s own volition or free will (though free will was referred to only implicitly, not explicitly) and how we can determine whether any particular thought arises due to destiny or due to free will. This discussion started from the first comment, in which a friend called Samarender Reddy wrote:

There seems to a problem with what you say. If whatever is to happen is decided by my prarabdha, then whatever motions the body is to go through and whatever the mind has to “think” to get the body to do actions as per prarabdha are also predetermined and “I, the ego” have no say in it. But you also say, “therefore we need not think”. And yet the mind will necessarily think some thoughts as per prarabdha. How do I distinguish thinking or thoughts associated with prarabdha and the other non-prarabdha associated thinking I seem to indulge in? Whenever any thought occurs, how do I know if it is prarabdha or the ego thinking? If I say, ok, whatever thoughts have to occur will occur to make the body do whatever it has to do, then it would seem that one has to be totally silent and not thinking and whenever any thought arises involuntarily I have to consider that as prarabdha thought and act accordingly? Is that what you are saying? Also, in that case will only such prarabdha thoughts then occur which require the body to do something or will such thoughts also occur which do not require the body to do something? I would really appreciate if you can clarify these doubts of mine.

This article is my reply to this comment, and also less directly to some of the ideas expressed in subsequent comments on the same subject.

Wednesday, 7 June 2017

A friend wrote to me last night saying that his father and brother believe that when one dreams ‘the dream is really you leaving the physical body and going to some other realm and interacting with other souls’, and that he always had trouble believing this idea, but asked me: ‘What is the best argument philosophically to counter such an assertion?’ The following is what I replied to him:

Thursday, 1 June 2017

A friend wrote to me today saying that he is practicing a Buddhist tradition of investigating ‘Who is reciting the Buddha?’, which he considers to be ‘no different from Ramana Maharshi’s teaching of self-enquiry’, and he asked whether there is spiritually any difference between investigating ‘to whom have these thoughts arisen?’ and ‘who is giving rise to these thoughts?’. The following is what I replied to him:

Alasdair: OK, so, if I am lying in bed, and I manage to remind myself that the first thing I have got to think of is ‘who am I?’ and keep the ‘I’-current running, but I also know that shortly after I get out of bed I have got to do certain things in the kitchen, or I have got certain tasks to …

Michael: Who has all these tasks?

A: The little ‘I’, and it is precisely that which …

M: No, it is not the little ‘I’. The little ‘I’ doesn’t have any tasks. It’s Alasdair who has all these tasks, isn’t it?

Saturday, 13 May 2017

I clearly understand that I do not have to complete any of my thoughts when they arise, but, as you explain in your book, have, instead, to use my rising thoughts to remind myself of my thinking mind, that is ‘I’, which in its turn should remind me of ‘I am’.

But I have a problem: when some useful thought (in my opinion) rises, I lose my strong intention to not complete it and just use it as a reminder of everything that it has to remind me. When some thought that I think to be good or useful rises, I try to use it as a reminder, but unsuccessfully and the idea given me by that thought continues living in my mind. That is, usually I do not tend to just stop such thoughts and cannot help completing them.

Could you please tell me what you do in such cases? Sri Bhagavan says that we should not complete any of our thoughts, and as I understand he means exactly what he says: any of our thoughts. He calls them ‘enemies’ that must be destroyed. What does the situation which I describe should look like ideally? How can I ignore such thoughts in a sense of treating them as well as all other thoughts? Please give me an explanation based on your own experience and understanding.

Take the case of anesthesia. I may be undergoing an operation, for which anesthesia is given. Under the influence of anesthesia, I am unaware or do not perceive the world. But once the operation is done and the anesthetic wears off and I wake up, I might see a big scar with stitches on my abdomen. Can I not thereby conclude that the world existed during the anesthesia for the operation to have taken place even though I was not perceiving it due to the effect of anesthesia. Otherwise, how to account for the fact of the scar on the abdomen, and the consequent relief from pain I might be experiencing. If the world did not exist when I was under anesthesia, then how did the operation take place, as evidenced by the scar and relief of symptoms, and maybe, say, even a specimen of my gallbladder taken out. And if we so concede that the world existed during anesthesia, then analogously can we not conclude that the world exists even during deep sleep. Perception is not the only means to establish a fact, right, with inference and verbal testimony being the other means of knowledge to establish a fact. In the case of anesthesia and deep sleep, while I cannot resort to perception as a means of knowledge to establish the fact of the existence of the world during those states, but surely inference (with regard to cause-and-effect) and the verbal testimony of others can lead me to conclude that the world does indeed exist during anesthesia and deep sleep, right?

Sunday, 16 April 2017

My question about I-Alone is this: in relaxing attention from objects I can be keenly aware of my existence as Sat Chit. That is effortless, but it is not completely and exclusively ‘I’-Self-aware. Other objects are also ‘known’.

Tuesday, 21 March 2017

A friend recently wrote to me saying that a friend of his had advised him that the way to quieten the mind is to watch it, and he implied that watching it means watching whatever thoughts flow through it, because he claimed that ‘once you start watching it [the flow of thoughts] you get separated from your thoughts’, thereby implying that we can detach ourself from thoughts by watching them. This article is adapted from the reply that I wrote to him.

Sunday, 19 March 2017

This article is adapted from the reply that I wrote to a friend who asked: ‘In Hinduism, it is written that if one remembers the Lord at the time of death one will obtain Moksha. Ramana Maharishi seems to endorse the same teaching with regards to Arunachala. I have read the path of Sri Ramana by Sadhu Om and practiced for many years what he calls Jnana japa. I have visited the holy mountain Arunachala many years ago. I am now over 60 and in the last years of my life. I am wondering whether it would be better to change my practice to remembering the Name of Arunachala. Any advice you can give me would be appreciated’.

Tuesday, 14 March 2017

In April the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK are organising a non-residential retreat in London, which they have asked me to lead, and recently a friend wrote suggesting that ‘in addition to the usual question and answer sessions, some sessions could be devoted to practising guided meditations’, so that ‘the sessions in the retreat should go beyond clarifying doubts to practising focussed meditation’. This article is adapted from the reply I wrote to him.

Wednesday, 8 March 2017

A friend recently wrote to me asking various questions about what I had said in some of the videos on my YouTube channel, Sri Ramana Teachings, and also about several other related topics, so this article is adapted from my reply to her.

This article is my reply to a recent comment on one of my earlier articles, How to attend to ourself?, in which a friend wrote: ‘I have tried being aware of being aware. I find it slightly different than being aware of myself. In being aware of being aware, it is more like getting more awake towards entire gamut of experience. While being aware of myself is more like somewhat withdrawing from other experiences. There is more effort involved in the latter. What is your experience?’

Sunday, 5 March 2017

A friend wrote to me recently asking ‘is it really not necessary to have a living guru if one truly opens oneself to Sri Ramana, and tries as best as one can to live the teachings with devotion and sincerity?’, to which I replied:

Sunday, 26 February 2017

A friend wrote to me recently explaining how he feels most of the time, and he started by saying, ‘I know for sure, that whatever I say, think or do, there is no “I” who is doing anything’, so the following is adapted from what I replied to him:

Monday, 6 February 2017

A friend recently wrote asking me to explain Bhagavad Gītā 4.18, in which Krishna says that whoever sees inaction (akarma) in action (karma) and action in inaction is wise (buddhimān), and how to apply this in practice in the context of Bhagavan’s teachings, so the following is an elaboration of my reply to him:

Sunday, 15 January 2017

In a comment on one of my recent articles, Why does Bhagavan sometimes say that the ātma-jñāni is aware of the body and world?, a friend called Ken wrote, ‘Ramana states: “The ego functions as the knot between the Self which is Pure Consciousness and the physical body which is inert and insentient.” Therefore, there is nothing that can experience other than the Self. [...] since the body is insentient (cannot experience), and only the Self can experience, then any experience that occurs, can only be experienced by the Self’, but contrary to what he argues in this comment and in several other ones, what experiences everything (all forms or phenomena) is not ‘the Self’ (ourself as we actually are) but only ourself as this ego, as I will try to explain in this article.

Friday, 6 January 2017

A friend wrote to me this morning, ‘When this world is nothing but an illusion... Why run after it; why try to change it; why try to enjoy its seeming pleasures; why be over concerned about expected profits and losses; why look forward to various relationships... why? Why not just remain still, now and always...When this world is nothing but an illusion...’, to which I replied:

Articles Discussing the Philosophy and Practice of the Spiritual Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana

Bhagavan Sri Ramana

About This Blog

Welcome to this blog, which is an extension of my main website, Happiness of Being, and which is dedicated to discussing the philosophy and practice of the spiritual teachings of our sadguru, Bhagavan Sri Ramana.

This blog is a growing archive of articles that I have written from time to time containing my translations of verses and other passages from the writings of Sri Ramana and his closest disciples, particularly Sri Muruganar and Sri Sadhu Om, my recordings of some of the explanations that I heard from Sri Sadhu Om, and my own musings about the philosophy, science and art of true self-knowledge as taught by Sri Ramana.

All the articles in this blog are also clearly indexed in two sections further down in this left margin, firstly according to date in reverse chronological order under the heading Article Archive, and secondly in greater detail according to subject arranged alphabetically under the heading Index of Topics.

Search this blog

The search box at the top left-hand corner of this page will only search for words in the articles, not in the comments, so if you want to search this entire blog, including the comments, you can use the following search box, which will do a Google search and return all the results in a separate tab:

Guidelines for Comments

Though I would prefer to keep this blog as a free and open forum for discussing Bhagavan’s teachings, during recent months the comments on each article have been increasingly dominated by trolls and others making ad hominem attacks rather than engaging in serious and reasonable discussions of his teachings, thereby deterring others who may wish to engage in (or just read) such discussions, so as of today, 1st December 2018, I have reluctantly decided to introduce comment moderation, and hence no comments will be posted until I have had time to read and approve them.

All comments are welcome provided that they are relevant to Bhagavan’s teachings and do not contain personal criticism or abuse. Since we do not all understand his teachings in exactly the same way, any open discussion of them will naturally involve disagreement, but any disagreement should be expressed in a polite, respectful and reasonable manner. By all means criticise ideas that you disagree with, but please explain clearly why you disagree with them and do not allow your criticism to deteriorate into an attack on the supposed character, motive or other qualities of any person who expressed them.

If you disagree with anything I have written, please do not hesitate to say why you disagree with me and, if you so choose, to ask for further clarification. I do not have time to answer all such comments (or most of the emails I receive), but if I think it is a sufficiently important point I will try to find time to answer it (though if I do not answer any point you have raised please do not assume that I consider it to be unimportant, since so many important points are raised that I do not have time to reply to all of them individually).

Since I will not be able to moderate all comments as and when they are submitted, please bear with me until I have time to read and approve whatever you may have submitted, and do not be disappointed if sometimes you have to wait more than a day or so before your comment is posted.

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Support this blog

If you would like to support me to continue writing for this blog and doing other related work, you may contribute to my living expenses by clicking on this button:

Until December 2015 I was able to carrying on writing this blog without needing to accept any of the kind offers of financial support that I received from friends and well-wishers, but I eventually reached a point where I seemed to have no option but to accept whatever support may be offered. Writing articles for this blog and replying to comments and emails asking questions about Bhagavan’s teachings is my full-time occupation (and one that I do solely for the love of this subject), so I have no other job and I receive only a small pension and some royalties from my book sales, which amount to far less than I need for rent, food and other essential expenses, so any financial help that any of you may be able to offer would be much appreciated.

However, I would like to emphasise that this blog and whatever else I write about Bhagavan’s teachings is still intended to be an entirely free service, because I believe his teachings are too valuable to be sold and should not be used for financial gain, so any contributions to me should be entirely voluntary and no one should feel any compulsion to contribute. I am sure that most of you have your own financial difficulties and constraints, because having given us the true wealth of his teachings, Bhagavan generally does not bestow material wealth on those of us who aspire to follow the path he has shown us, and because he has made us understand that money and material gain are not the aim or purpose of our life. Therefore please do not try to contribute anything more than you can comfortably afford, and if you are unable to contribute anything, please do not feel bad about it, because ultimately it is up to Bhagavan to decide how (or if) he wants to provide for my material needs, and I am sure he will take care of me in one way or another (whether or not I like the way he chooses).